When readability formulas are used to review workbooks and textbooks their value is limited because application techniques have failed to take into consideration the exercises and examples in these books. The O'Hear and Ramsey (OR) Corrective technique has been developed to alleviate this problem. It allows readability data to be used accurately…

To investigate whether political assertions were interjected into American sports coverage of the 1984 Olympic games and which direction those assertions took, a study examined the Los Angeles Times' coverage of the games in its award-winning special supplement sections. The "Times" included these special supplements in its papers from…

A content analysis of programing on the three major television networks was conducted to determine the number of positive role models who read actively on television. Programs on each network were analyzed for one week, and all references to or acts of reading were tabulated and categorized according to their purpose. These included characters…

Intended for administrators and policymakers as well as teachers, this digest discusses the nature of narratology and how it relates to language arts instruction. The digest first defines narratology as the structuralist study of narrative aimed at understanding how recurrent elements, themes, and patterns yield a set of universals that determine…

The influence of the popular fitness movement on professional preparation in physical education was examined. This study sought to answer the following questions: (1) How many fitness majors, minors, non-teaching and teaching majors are offered in physical education programs in the Central District of the American Alliance for Health, Physical…

A secondary analysis of data from two Indiana Polls, the first carried out in January 1983 and the second in November and December 1983, was conducted to compare respondents' reports of their viewing of network television news and local television news, and their reading of local newspapers. The intent was to use respondents' preferred source for…

A comparison of the current television series "Miami Vice" with the "film noir" genre of American movies from the forties and fifties reveals many similar elements, such as visual style, mood, theme, and sensibility. "Miami Vice" is set in a large city whose art deco architecture provides an ironic contrast to noir's…

A target partition analysis (TPA) was used to help seven subject matter experts, with little expertise in testing, evaluate relationships among test items. The subjects were experts in Income Maintenance in the field of public assistance work; they were trainers affiliated with the Professional Development Program's Income Maintenance Training…

A study examined the images of the 1980 presidential election primaries as expressed by televised political spot advertisements. Systematic coding of image content was completed for all 30- and 60-second commercials during the primary campaign. An advertisement's image score was defined as the number of positive evaluations of words and phrases…

Designed to assist teachers in identifying quality software, this guide provides software evaluation forms and associated evaluation criteria to aid in completing the forms. The two-part instrument is used in the evaluation process conducted by Alberta Education, which involves the Program Development Division and the Computer Technology Project's…

The construct validity of written Ideaphoria and oral Ideaphoria is discussed through analysis of their content and format and their correlations with tests of divergent thinking and writing speed. The current status of research on the measurement of divergent thinking ability is reviewed. Although the Ideaphoria tests have the same content as…

Measures designed to detect elder abuse lack uniformity as a result of having been designed in isolation. To develop and test a uniform index for the identification of elder abuse victims, an analysis of existing abuse identification instruments was conducted. Initially, seven elder abuse identification measures were content analyzed, resulting in…

Photographs, unlike paintings or drawings, capture rather than interpret a moment in time and experience. The techniques for decoding the meaning in still photographs is photoanalysis. Photoanalysis is not a critique of the technical quality of a photograph, but rather an analysis of its content and intent. The rules of scientific method including…

An analysis of the syntax of economics textbooks was undertaken to (1) provide real-language examples of the difficult grammatical structures being taught in an advanced economics reading course, and (2) construct a factual database of the nature of economics textbooks. Five texts representative of those typically used in introductory economics…

To answer the question of whether today's ads are culturally faithful in the depiction and portrayal of women, a study compared the findings of two 1970s studies of advertisements in four national magazines--"Ms.,""Playboy,""Time," and "Newsweek" as well as a film reflecting the findings--with a replication…